Reclaiming the seeds, becoming "peasants". On-farm agrobiodiversity conservation and the making of farmers' collective identity

Special issue: Fields and Forest. Ethnographic Perspectives on Environmental Globalization, Münster U., D. Münster & S. Dorondel (eds)International audienceThe emergence of a professional seed industry over the course of the 20th century has been concomitant with the construction of a regime of innovation favorable to breeders and to a transformation in the nature of plants themselves. Together, these elements have led farmers engaged in industrialized forms of agriculture to outsource most of their seed-related activities. Such an organization of farming activities is now so embedded in industrialized farming systems that it has become extremely complicated for farmers--and for other actors, as well--to contest it without being accused of opposing progress and modernity. In the 2000s, however, new developments in the anti-GMO struggle and the toughening of seed laws led an alliance of French farmers organizations to go beyond protest and denunciation and to try to build alternatives to the dominant industrial seed system. The Réseau Semences Paysannes (literally the "Peasant Seed Network," RSP) was set up in 2003 as a result of this alliance. It is dependent on a network of farmers who try out alternative practices, such as reviving heirloom varieties or developing on-farm breeding. The creation of the RSP was accompanied by the establishment of a new category, semences paysannes ("peasant seeds"), whose semantic significance is examined in this essay. After recalling the sociohistorical context surrounding French agriculture and offering an overview of the legal considerations regarding seeds, I give a brief summary of this movement's emergence and examine its social and political implications. I then contextualize the movement by drawing parallels with other environmental contestation initiatives